Where abbreviations are used, these follow the conventions of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.). The catalogue of a major exhibition of works by Euphronios at the Louvre in 1990 (with variant displays in Arezzo and Berlin) remains a primary point of reference, and is here simply cited as Euphronios (i.e. Denoyelle & Pasquier 1990). FR = A. Furtwängler & K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei (Munich 1904–32).

1 PREFACE

Recognition of the iconographic legacy of the krater – as the pagan precursor of Christian tableaux – came very soon after its appearance in New York: see P. Devambez, ‘Le nouveau cratère d’Euphronios au Metropolitan Museum’ in CR Acad. Inscrip. 117/3 (1973), 370–2 (‘nous évoquerions volontiers la Pietà d’Avignon’). Note also Dietrich von Bothmer’s comment when presenting the vase to the Acquisitions Committee of the Metropolitan Museum (Hoving et al. 1975, 50): ‘The dead Sarpedon is the first in a long iconographical tradition that includes Memnon being carried by his mother Eos, and the dead Meleager carried home from battle. It is at the end of this iconographical tradition that we see finally, in the Renaissance, those poignant pictures of the deposition of Christ and the Pieta.’

2 ‘THE MILLION-DOLLAR VASE’

The basic modern story of the krater was established within a few years of its arrival in New York: see e.g. K. E. Meyer, The Plundered Past (London 1974), 86–100, 302–8. Subsequent journalistic investigations include P. Watson and C. Todeschini, The Medici Conspiracy (New York 2006) – well intentioned, but in places confused about details. Bob Hecht by Bob Hecht, edited by Geraldine Norman (Vermont 2014) gathers various testimonia from Robert Hecht, including contradictory accounts of how he came by the vase. V. Silver, The Lost Chalice: The Real-Life Chase for One of the World’s Rarest Masterpieces – a Priceless 2,500-Year-Old Artifact Depicting the Fall of Troy [sic] (New York 2009), attempts to follow the trail of the Sarpedon kylix – and casts some light upon the krater too.

Tarbell’s sherds: some from the Akropolis, now reconstituted with the kylix in Athens NM; another, from Cerveteri (ex-Castellani collection), joins with a pelike in the Villa Giulia (as Beazley saw) – but belongs to the Smart Museum, University of Chicago (inv. 1967.115.287). Pentheus scene: compare the kylix by Douris in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth (inv. AP 2000.02) – a piece very likely supplied by Giacomo Medici to Elie Borowski.

Munich krater: the question of provenance studiously evaded in Münchner Jahrbuch 22 (1971), 229ff. Etruscan use of the vase: Vermeule 1965, 34. On the kylix from Sant’Antonio: Williams 1991, Rizzo 2009. On the inscription: M. Martelli, ‘Dedica ceretana a Hercle’, in Archeologia Classica 43 (1991), 613–21.

3 EUPHRONIOS AND ‘THE PIONEERS’

Lucien Bonaparte’s partisan claims for Etruscan culture rested on rather hazy philological skills: he surmised, for instance, from the inscription Euthymides ho Polio[u] (‘Euthymides [son] of Po[l]lias’], that hopolio [sic] was Etruscan for ‘made’ (thus Museum Etrusque de Lucien Bonaparte Prince de Canino. Fouilles de 1828 à 1829, Viterbo 1829, 122).

The possibility that the Euphronios who signed egraphsen (usually thus, not egrapsen) was not the same as the Euphronios who signed epoiêsen was entertained by Beazley (ARV I, 13); note also Robertson 1992, 43, and Beazley’s further considerations in his ‘Potter and Painter in Ancient Athens’ (1944), in D. C. Kurtz ed., Greek Vases: Lectures by J. D. Beazley (Oxford 1989), 39–59. Furtwängler on ‘Euphronios fantasies’: FR II, 11; on the painter’s ‘strength in fine detail’, FR I, 103. The transition from Klein to Beazley is charted in P. Rouet, Approaches to the Study of Greek Vases: Beazley and Pottier (Oxford 2001). Beazley never actually acknowledged Morelli as an influence: for his ‘Morellian’ principle, see Attic Red-Figured Vases in American Museums (Oxford 1918), vi.

Euphronios features only marginally in J. C. Hoppin’s 1917 monograph, Euthymides and his Fellows (Harvard). But the kinship of stylistic detail between the two painters is nicely revealed by Hoppin’s insistence (pp. 68–72) that the Berlin krater showing athletes in various poses (Fig. 1) should be attributed to Euthymides. (Beazley’s review of Hoppin’s book, in JHS 37 [1917], 233–7, is instructive.) See also Wegner 1979. The challenges of conducting a ‘Morellian’ analysis of Euphronios’ style are evident from E. Svatik, ‘A Euphronios kylix’, in The Art Bulletin 21.3 (1939), 251–71. There is a more suave account of stylistic hallmarks in Bothmer 1989. For an exemplary quandary of attribution, see M. Tiverios, ‘Sosias kai Euphronios’, in Arch. Eph. 1977, 1–11.

On the Euphronios–Smikros problem, see Hedreen 2016 (with further bibliography) and Williams (forthcoming). The problem is compounded by fragments of an inscribed pillar recovered from the Agora, listing Athenian casualties from campaigns on Thasos and in the Thracian Chersonnese during the year 465 BC (IG I2 928). Several of the names recall those associated with ceramic craft c.500 BC: thus ‘Euphronios’, ‘Smikythos’, ‘Sosias’ and ‘Smikros’. One of the generals leading the campaign is reported to have been Leagros (presumed killed, though he is not on the list). If not coincidence of (common) names, this evidence raises more questions than it answers. According to conventional chronology, Euphronios would then have been about sixty or seventy years old. Would a man of that age have been involved in such a testing expedition – which was in part to quell a revolt on Thasos, but also to settle a colony at Ennea Hodoi (later Amphipolis) on the River Strymon?

On the painter’s presumed presbyopia, Maxmin 1974; Williams 2005 offers an alternative occasion for the Acropolis dedication. For Euphronios experimenting with the medium, see J. Mertens, ‘A White-Ground Cup by Euphronios’, in Harv. Stud. 76 (1972), 271–81; B. Cohen ed., The Colors of Clay: Special Techniques in Athenian Vases (Los Angeles 2006), 48–51 (Agora Museum inv. P 32344) and 123–4. The nature of ‘naturalism’ in Pioneer work is nicely discussed in Neer 2002 (esp. Ch. 2). For Gombrich and the first frontal foot, see E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (12th ed., London 1972), 51–2.

On the ‘curious exhibitionism’ of Euphronios with regard to anatomical detail, see Maxmin 1973 (whence the quote) and Villard 1953. For Euphronios’ drawing within its wider ambience, see D. Williams, ‘The drawing of the human figure on early red-figure vases’, in D. Buitron-Oliver ed., New Perspectives in Early Greek Art (Washington 1991), 285–301.

4 ATHENS AND THE SYMPOSIUM

On the krater within the symposium, Lissarrague 1990 (also Lissarrague, The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet [Princeton 1990]), 19–460; note also M. Langer, ‘Where should we place the krater? An optimistic reconstruction’, in A. Avramidou & D. Demetriou eds, Approaching the Ancient Artifact (Berlin 2014), 385–98. That the krater might stand for ‘mixing’ in a wider sense, see R. Schlesier, ‘Kratêr. The mixing-vessel as metaphorical space in ancient Greek tradition’, in F. Horn & C. Breytenbach eds, Spatial Metaphors: Ancient Texts and Transformations (Berlin 2016), 69–84.

The case for painted pottery being ‘subsidiary’ to metal vessels is polemically made in M. Vickers & D. Gill, Artful Crafts: Ancient Greek Silverware and Pottery (Oxford 1994). Counter-arguments, and estimates of the ancient value of painted vases, are to be found in Williams 1996, and Boardman 2001; see also R. M. Cook, Greek Painted Pottery (3rd ed. London 1997), 259–62. Vase-painters, for all their virtuosity in draughtsmanship, were likely to have participated in all stages of production – thus Boardman 2001, 142: ‘I feel sure that even a Euphronios sometimes carried the wood and skimmed the clay.’

For discussion of ‘at-home’ symposia, see L. C. Nevett, Domestic Space in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge 2010). It is worth adding here that painted pottery marked as ‘state property’ was apparently used for the communal meals (syssitia) granted to public officials at Athens: see A. Steiner, ‘Private and public: links between the symposium and syssition in fifth-century Athens’, Cl. Ant. 21 (2002), 347–90, and K. M. Lynch, The Symposium in Context: Pottery from a Late Archaic House near the Athenian Agora (Princeton 2011). For Euphronios cups from the Agora, see AJA 103 (1999), 298.

There are several commentaries on and discussions of Xenophanes’ prescription for a decorous symposium: I have drawn principally upon C. M. Bowra, ‘Xenophanes, Fragment 1’, in Cl. Phil. 33 (1938), 353–67 (incidentally, Maurice Bowra was sponsor of Dietrich von Bothmer’s Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford); see further F. Hobden, The Symposion in Ancient Greek Society and Thought (Cambridge 2013), 25ff. An approachable survey of sympotic poetry is given in D. A. Campbell, The Golden Lyre (London 1983): see esp. Ch. 2.

Much discussion of symposium-scenes in late-archaic Attic red-figure vase-painting in Catoni 2013; also K. Topper, The Imagery of the Athenian Symposium (Cambridge 2012). Dionysiac revels depicted by Euphronios are discussed by I. Scheibler in Wehgartner 1992, 104–12. On the kottabos-game, see E. Csapo and M. C. Miller, ‘The “kottabos-toast” and an inscribed red-figured cup’, in Hesperia 60 (1991), 367–82. The proposal to see Spartan hetairai on the St Petersburg psykter comes in G. Ferrari, Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece (Chicago 2002), 19–20; alternatively see P. Kretschmer, Die griechischen Vaseninschriften (Gütersloh 1894), 87, noting that other kottabos-casts are similarly inscribed in Doric, and likening this practice to e.g. the use of French for terms in the sport of fencing.

‘Who would have suspected a relationship between an aristocratic, a coveted inaccessible beauty, and a craftsman from the Kerameikos…?’ (Frel 1983, 147). Who indeed? On the Leagros phenomenon, see Shapiro 2000 and id. 2004. The phrase Leagros kalos has also been found upon a black-glaze or black-figure fragment from a pit in the agora of Eretria, deemed to date shortly after the Persian sack of Eretria in 490 BC (the vase appears to have been a psykter).

5 EPIC AS EDUCATION

Credit to a doctor for spotting the scar tissue on Sarpedon’s body: H. Johnson, ‘The wounds of Sarpedon’, in The Lancet 357 (2001), 1370.

Discussion of the Patrokleia here is indebted to A. Barchiesi, Homeric Effects in Vergil’s Narrative (Princeton 2015), 1–34. Note that Bacchylides fr. 20E (Campbell) also hymns the solicitude of Zeus for Sarpedon.

On viewing the hero’s body: C. Segal, The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Mnemosyne Suppl. 17, 1971); and Ch. 7 of H. Lovatt, The Epic Gaze (Cambridge 2013). Regarding a battlefield casualty, note the epic resonance of Herodotus 9.25.1. On the size of heroes, and ancient use of megafauna, see A. Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters (Princeton 2000), 104–56. For the claim that a ‘heroic code’ in Homer is ‘complete and unambiguous’, and beyond rational discourse, see M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (2nd ed. Harmondsworth 1978), 113. For Euphronios’ depictions of Ajax and Achilles, see Padgett 2001 (Ajax cup: Robertson 1981, 25–8).

See Neils 2009 for the argument that Sarpedon’s body was viewed as that of a ‘soft’ barbarian enemy. (She cites passages from Homer, e.g. Il. 22.370–5, but Euphronios would be evoking a very different narrative about Sarpedon if this interpretation was right, and so far as we know, it is Homer who constructs Sarpedon as a character in the epic tradition.)

The names of the figures on ‘Side B’ of the krater are discussed in John Boardman’s contribution to Cianferoni et al. eds 1992, 45–50; see also Bothmer 1976, 494–5. For further exploration of the meaning of the scene, see N. J. Spivey, ‘The Piping Crab’, in Mediterranea (forthcoming).

6 AN IMAGE FOR THE AFTERLIFE

Up-to-date survey of Cerveteri’s archaeology: V. Bellelli et al., Gli Etruschi e il Mediterraneo: La città di Cerveteri (Rome 2014). On the Etruscan taste for/use of Greek vases, see Spivey 2007 (with previous bibliography), and Lubtchansky 2014; also J. de la Genière ed., Les clients de la céramique grecque (Paris 2006), and Cerchiai 2008. For Euphronios and Cerveteri, see Arias 1980. Over-valued vases? – quote from M. Vickers in AJA 94 (1990), 619. Greek vases in non-funerary use at Cerveteri: see M. Cristofani et al., Caere 3.1: Lo scarico arcaico della Vigna Parrocchiale (Rome 1992), 61–105.

Tomb of the Lionesses: quote from M. Pallottino, Etruscan Painting (New York 1952), 44. Pezzino krater: the case for Patroclus made by P. E. Arias, ‘Morte di un eroe’, in Arch.Cl. 21 (1969), 190–203; cf. D. Deorsola et al. eds, Veder Greco: le necropoli di Agrigento (Rome 1988), 221.

Hypnos and Thanatos: Lessing 1769 remains a jaunty essay on why Death was rarely symbolized by a skeleton; and Robert 1879 a useful collection of visual data. Beyond K. Heinemann’s sensitive dissertation Thanatos in Poesie und Kunst der Griechen (Munich 1913) – plus relevant entries in LIMC – see C. Mainoldi, ‘Sonno e morte in Grecia antica’, in R. Raffaelli ed., Rappresentazioni della morte (Urbino 1987), 9–46; and H. A. Shapiro, Personifications in Greek Art: The Representation of Abstract Concepts 600–400 B.C. (Zürich 1993), 132–47. For the images of Hypnos and Thanatos on Athenian lekythoi, see Oakley 2004, 125–37 (including a catalogue of sixteen examples). Note that the presence of Hermes on a poorly preserved lekythos in the Athens National Museum (inv. 1830) depends upon what a modern draughtsman made of the piece: see E. Buschor, ‘Attische Lekythen der Parthenonzeit’, in Münchner Jahrbuch n.s. 2 (1925), pl. 5.

7 THE AFTERLIFE OF AN IMAGE (I)

For the Alexandria inscription, see Rev. Arch. 40 (1880), 166–70.

Euphronios’ Memnon fragment is Metropolitan Museum 11.140.6. The claim has been made that a number of vases deemed to show Sarpedon may rather represent Memnon – see M. E. Clark & W. D. E. Coulson, ‘Sarpedon and Memnon’, in Museum Helveticum 35 (1978), 65–73. This connects to the long-running debate about the relationship of the Iliad to the Aethiopis. Arguing from vases to establish the content of lost epic can be circular (E. Löwy, ‘Zur Aithiopis’, Neue Jahrb. 1914, 81–94, is more cautious); more convincing is Bothmer 1987, and Euphronios, 114.

Other cistae with corpse-bearers as handles include New York Metropolitan Museum 22.84.1; Berlin 6236; London BM 738–20 263; Villa Giulia 13199 (Amazons). Quote from J. D. Beazley, The Lewes House Collection of Ancient Gems, Oxford 2002 [Oxford 1920], 36.

Aeschylus fragments are edited and discussed in Sommerstein 2008; for staging of the Europa/Carians, see Keen 2005, esp. 64–7. On the New York vase, Messerschmidt 1932 and Picard 1953: see also A. Kossatz-Deissmann, Dramen des Aischylos auf westgriechischen Vasen (Mainz 1978), 66–74, and O. Taplin, Pots and Plays (Los Angeles 2007), 72–4; and note also the hydria in Policoro (inv. 35294), showing (on the shoulder) Hypnos and Thanatos aloft with a body.

Iliac tablets: quote from M. Squire, The Iliad in a Nutshell: Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae Iliacae (Oxford 2011), 175.

For the ivory plaquette from Pompeii: advancing the Adonis identification (and a ‘scene startingly reminiscent of the Deposition’), see P. W. Lehmann, Roman Wall Paintings from Boscoreale in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 58; see also B. Schneider, ‘Zwei römische Elfenbeinplatten mit mythologischen Szenen’, in Kölner Jahrbuch für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 23 (1990), 255–72 (esp. 265–7).

For the Grottaferrata relief, see L. Musso, ‘Il trasporto funebre di Achille sul rilievo Colonna-Grottaferrata: una nota iconografica’, in Bull. Comm. 93 (1989/90), 9–22; further discussion and full bibliography in A. Ambrogio et al., Sculture antiche nell’Abbazia di Grottaferrata (Rome 2008), 90–100. (For original composition, see Winckelmann, Monumenti Inediti [Rome 1767], Fig. 136.)

8 THE AFTERLIFE OF AN IMAGE (II)

Warburg’s concept of the ‘pathos formula’, and its application, remain problematic: see J. Knape, ‘Gibt es Pathosformeln?’ in W. Dickhut et al. eds, Muster im Wandel (Göttingen 2008), 115–37. For divulgation and discussion see E. H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (2nd ed. Oxford 1986), and R. Woodfield ed., Art History as Cultural History: Warburg’s Projects (Amsterdam 2001).

For Beazley and the ‘tracking’ paradigm, see J. Whitley, ‘Beazley as theorist’, in Antiquity 71 (1997), 40–7.

‘It was the fate of the Renaissance, that its cot stood in a coffin’: the line (literally translated) is André Jolles quoting his younger self, from a lecture given at Groningen in 1897, in a letter to his friend Johan Huizinga: see L. Hanssen et al. eds., J. Huizinga: Briefwisseling I: 1894–1924 (UtrecH 1989), 326. As the letter makes clear, Jolles was thinking of Nicola Pisano’s use of the Phaedra sarcophagus in Pisa’s Campo Santo (pace Settis in Catoni 2013, 85).

The Alberti passage is rendered from his Italian edition: the Latin is a little different – and the basis for C. Grayson’s translation, first published in 1972. See also A. Grafton, ‘Historia and istoria: Alberti’s terminology in context’, in I Tatti Studies in the Italian Reniassance 8 (1999), 37–68. For sarcophagi potentially available to Alberti, see C. Robert, Die antiken Sarkophag-reliefs 3.2 (Berlin 1894), pl. 96; and P. P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture (London 1986), 145–7. The story of the Barberini sarcophagus, lost and found: B. Kuhn-Forte, ‘Der wiederentdeckte Meleagersarkophag Barberini in São Paulo. Provenienz und grafische Dokumentation (ca. 1516–1630)’, in Pegasus 13 (2011), 41–75.

For other Meleager sarcophagi, beyond the corpus provided by Koch 1975, see formal analysis of a group of such sarcophagi by G. Traversari, ‘Sarcofagi con la morte di Meleagro nell’influsso artistico della Colonna Aureliana’, MDAI(R) 1968, 154–62. See also comments on particular pieces, viz.: R. Calza, Antichità di Villa Doria Pamphilj (Rome 1977), no. 189; L. Guerrini, Palazzo Mattei di Giove: le antichità (Rome 1982), no. 64; G. Becatti, ‘Un sarcofago di Perugia e l’officina del Maestro delle imprese di Marco Aurelio’, in L. F. Sandler ed., Essays in Memory of Karl Lehmann (New York 1964), 30–7; A. M. McCann, Roman Sarcophagi in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York 1978), 61–6.

Possible influence upon Giotto: A. Bush-Brown, ‘Giotto: two problems in the origin of his style’, in Art Bulletin 34 (1952), 42–6. Ghiberti quote: from R. Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti (Princeton 1970), 293. Donatello’s use of Roman sarcophagi: M. Greenhalgh, Donatello and His Sources (London 1982); H. W. Janson, ‘Donatello and the antique’, in Donatello e il suo tempo (Florence 1968), 77–96. Signorelli: on Vasari’s anecdote and the Cortona Deposition, M. Cruttwell, Luca Signorelli (London 1899), 10; T. Henry, The Life and Art of Luca Signorelli (London 2012), xiii–xv; 215. On the legacy of the ‘dead arm’ element, see G. Pellegrini, Il braccio della morte: migrazioni iconografiche (Cagliari 1993).

On Raphael’s use of sarcophagi, see Spivey 2001, 112–21; C. L. Ragghianti, La Deposizione di Raffaello (Milan 1947); K. Hermann-Fiore ed., Raffaello: La Deposizione in Galleria Borghese (Milan 2010), 129–31. On Vasari, see L. De Girolami Cheney, ‘Giorgio Vasari: Il trasporto di Cristo o Cristo portato al Sepolcro’, in Artibus et Historiae 32, no. 64 (2011), 41–61.

On David, see S. Howard, A Classical Frieze by Jacques Louis David (Sacramento 1975). For assorted David drawings from Meleager sarcophagi, see P. Rosenberg & L.-A. Prat, Jacques-Louis David 1748–1825: Catalogue raisonné des dessins (Milan 2002).

Research in the field of ‘embodied cognition’ is rapidly developing: citation here is limited to D. Freedberg and V. Gallese, ‘Motion, emotion and empathy in esthetic experience’, in Trends in Cognitive Science 11 (2007), 197–203.

9 CODA

On Sarpedon’s Lycian pedigree, see P. Kretschmer in Glotta 28 (1940), 104; also Janko 1992, 371ff. For ‘Edifice G’ at Xanthos, see H. Metzger, Fouilles de Xanthe II (Paris 1963), 49–61. Keen 1996 presents the optimistic case for regarding it as the Sarpedoneion; see also A. G. Keen, Dynastic Lycia (Leiden 1998), 186–92.